dozerII
Admiral
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2009
- Messages
- 6,527
I posted this in another thread I had going and didn't get any response so I figured it was important enough to post on it's own. The engine replacement is for a 1981 Mercruiser 140 ser# begins with 59, Replacing it with a new 3.0 liter crate motor one piece rear main seal from Michigan Motorz, here's the story
Just went through the weekend from h@#$, the new motor arrived on Friday night, with the parts that were said to be required to make it work with the existing transom assembly pre 1987 . 12.5 in flywheel, 3 bolt Sierra coupler and an adapter for the exhaust / intake manifold. Maybe this info will help some one else out in the future. The grease fitting for the coupler splines cannot be used as it will contact the transom assembly when it rotates on the top and bottom. When you bolt the bell housing on the back of the engine be very careful to check for clearance between the coupler bolts and the housing. The port side of the housing is indented towards the bow about an 1/8" and just the way the crank was sitting one of these bolts only slightly touched the housing, I was very careful when I put it on the see if it went all the way before we tightened the bolts. We installed the motor hooked everything up, rewired the ignition to accomedate the Delco Voyager distributor, and tried to fire it up, that's another story. When we did get it to run it made a bad grinding sound and there was aluminum dust in the bilge under the rear of the oil pan. Out came the motor, pull the bell housing and the three coupler bolts have ground a 1/16" half moon in the port side of the housing and caused a small crack. I ground the heads of the coupler bolts down a little and cleaned up the marks in the housing to where they were smooth then JB welded an aluminum patch over the area outside of the small crack for insurance. Checked for clearance by painting the inside of the bell housing and bolt heads then re-assembling and rotating it several revolutions then removing the bell housing to check for marks. We also had a no fuel issue and found that the early fuel pump will not work on the new block, I was lucky to have a newer 4.3 pump in stock that worked to get the motor fired up. We then ran the motor on the floor for 25 minutes to break the cam in and make sure everything was good.
Monday when Michigan Motorz opened I called and talked to the person that I purchased from to explain what happened, his response was, yup we run into that quite often, I asked why they don't have a warning in the instructions or at least mention it to the customer all I got was I DUNNO, but we fix it by grinding down the head of the bolts a little.
Hope it helps someone else.
Just went through the weekend from h@#$, the new motor arrived on Friday night, with the parts that were said to be required to make it work with the existing transom assembly pre 1987 . 12.5 in flywheel, 3 bolt Sierra coupler and an adapter for the exhaust / intake manifold. Maybe this info will help some one else out in the future. The grease fitting for the coupler splines cannot be used as it will contact the transom assembly when it rotates on the top and bottom. When you bolt the bell housing on the back of the engine be very careful to check for clearance between the coupler bolts and the housing. The port side of the housing is indented towards the bow about an 1/8" and just the way the crank was sitting one of these bolts only slightly touched the housing, I was very careful when I put it on the see if it went all the way before we tightened the bolts. We installed the motor hooked everything up, rewired the ignition to accomedate the Delco Voyager distributor, and tried to fire it up, that's another story. When we did get it to run it made a bad grinding sound and there was aluminum dust in the bilge under the rear of the oil pan. Out came the motor, pull the bell housing and the three coupler bolts have ground a 1/16" half moon in the port side of the housing and caused a small crack. I ground the heads of the coupler bolts down a little and cleaned up the marks in the housing to where they were smooth then JB welded an aluminum patch over the area outside of the small crack for insurance. Checked for clearance by painting the inside of the bell housing and bolt heads then re-assembling and rotating it several revolutions then removing the bell housing to check for marks. We also had a no fuel issue and found that the early fuel pump will not work on the new block, I was lucky to have a newer 4.3 pump in stock that worked to get the motor fired up. We then ran the motor on the floor for 25 minutes to break the cam in and make sure everything was good.
Monday when Michigan Motorz opened I called and talked to the person that I purchased from to explain what happened, his response was, yup we run into that quite often, I asked why they don't have a warning in the instructions or at least mention it to the customer all I got was I DUNNO, but we fix it by grinding down the head of the bolts a little.
Hope it helps someone else.
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